Why you should build a Hackintosh

Fast forward 5 years and Apple still doesn’t have a solution that satisfies customers that have extensive need for customization and specialized workflows. During the time of trash can Mac Pro, I worked on a 5K iMac, because I really liked the hi-resolution display. But hiding away all those cables was a chore. After Apple showed us the future of professional hardware with the iMac Pro, I was fed up with the situation and I started to investigate the possibility of building my own Hackintosh. Putting all the hardware together was the easy part, making macOS work was tough, but I did it.

I honestly don’t believe a ‘Hackintosh’ is a suitable machine for any mission-critical environment, but if you’re willing to deal with the risks and minor headaches, it’s a not-as-hard-as-you-think way to get your hands on a very powerful macOS machine for a very reasonable price – with a lot more options and choices than Apple will ever give you, even if you take the hypothetical, vapourware new Mac Pro into account.

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I’ve built a few Hackintosh workstations for people who were tired of waiting for Apple to update its hardware. My own workstation, an HP Z800 with dual 12 core 3.6 GHz Xeons makes a fine Hackintosh out of the box which I played around with for a few weeks before I realized that I prefer Linux. If Apple wants to get lazy with its hardware development and focus on its iPhones and iPads then I can’t understand why it can’t partner with a few trusted hardware vendors such as HP or Dell to produce Apple blessed workstations that run macOS. I’d pay for one (assuming it wouldn’t be the exorbitant prices Apple currently charges for what amounts to out of date hardware.)

I’ve just spent a busy evening putting Kubuntu on an old upgraded 2010 Macbook Pro. I have two of those, and given an SSD and 8GB of RAM, they’re still really solid machines. They’re not a cinch to open up and switch the keyboard on, but they’re much more serviceable than what’s coming out of Apple these days, and if you can stomach hybrid GPT/MBR partition tables and a bit of tinkering to get drivers working, it’s good stuff.

Actually it has plenty to do with the topic at hand. The value of going through the work to install a closed, proprietary operating system is in question. Obviously the easiest thing to do is put MacOS on Macs, rather than Linux on Macs or MacOS on other hardware. What are you working against EFI/UEFI hacks, driver issues, and overcoming Apple’s non-standard engineering to do?

If you’re going to invest your work customizing with some parts from a company like Apple, I’m saying to move away from the walled garden, the DRM, the increasing loss of control of what you do with your own hardware.

For me the main criteria today is a laptop that is powerful enough for what I need, and that doesn’t require tinkering.

I need high quality applications, running on top of a high quality software, reliably. Ideally with great Unix tools. Mac gives me all that, and the MacBook pro is a great portable device to use in the office, home, planes, meetings, etc.

Last time I looked at updates, Apple was reportedly going with an external GPU solution for their future Mac Pro replacement, ignoring the possibility of other expansion cards like sound that might exist. Going with external thunderbolt/pci express means hardly anyone hardware maker will support expansion cards, leaving the pros in the exact same situation as before.

In summary, I would never recommend to anybody to build a hackintosh unless he has the time and energy to make it work. I can say, a hackintosh is not about the money, it’s about the challange to make it work. If you need a machine for your professional work, get an iMac or an iMac Pro.

Or you buy a PC and you get access to a wide range of color, power, size to fit *YOUR* needs.

I don’t know what your comment is a comment to.

If you present your “Or” as a 3rd option I would say it is already covered by my 2nd option “You like macOS, but Apple doesn’t sell the kind of hardware that you want/need”

IF you present your “Or” as a continuation of the original articles “If you need a machine for your professional work, get an iMac or an iMac Pro” I would say that obviously you can get a “non Apple made PC” to do professional work, but the topic here is HackInTosh so we are clearly assuming that macOS is a requirement for that work

I recently switched back to Windows, because I’m tired of the Apple tax, and tired of Apple producing crappy hardware with features like a touch bar I don’t want or need.

That said, even though WIndows has copied a lot of the things in macOS I really love (like multiple desktops and the swipe interface on the trackpad) there are some things Windows just doesn’t get right. Working on a high gamut screen is a still a total nightmare – it can’t render it’s default UI into sRBG like macOS does, which means everything gets completely blown on a high gamut screen. It makes it extremely unpleasant to look at. Windows also can’t handle outputting to a second screen if that second screen has a different screen DPI than the primary. You really can’t even effectively change the resolution (even temporarily for games) without messing up all the icons, and window sizes. This is just unforgivable in 2018 – I mean seriously, Microsoft needs to get their shit together.

On the other hand, the laptop I have now is a convertible, and Windows’ tablet mode is pretty neat with the ability to draw and all that – Apple doesn’t have that, and their iPad integration story is week (their biggest product story hole, IMHO). And I can play games again. So it’s a mixed bag.

> Windows also can’t handle outputting to a second screen if that second screen has a different screen DPI than the primary. You really can’t even effectively change the resolution (even temporarily for games) without messing up all the icons, and window sizes. This is just unforgivable in 2018 – I mean seriously, Microsoft needs to get their shit together.

KDE’s Wayland session and Sway (and probably GNOME, though I haven’t checked in a while) are almost done implementing proper multiDPI.

And the best thing about Windows, the keyboard handling! Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, alt-tab, even On-Off work as God intended! Oh how I love them when I come back from working on the Macbook Pro…

I hate the MBP keyboard with a vengeance, and not because of the shape or feel. It is keyboard navigation that makes me want to throw the damn thing out the window.

In the MBP you never know where a combination with Fn, cloverleaf, funny-shape or control is going to take you; the previous word, line start, doc start, another screen, another instance of the same application… It makes Vim a model of clarity. My cut-paste keyboard sequence is often Ctrl-C, Ctrl-Z, Cloverleaf-Z Cloverleaf-C Cloverleaf-V. It makes me feel obtuse, not bright and sprightly like the archetypal Mac user.

In summary, I would never recommend to anybody to build a hackintosh unless he has the time and energy to make it work. I can say, a hackintosh is not about the money, it’s about the challange to make it work. If you need a machine for your professional work, get an iMac or an iMac Pro.

Interesting that you preferred to quote the second article instead of the more up to date one, where he clearly states:

“Looking back on 7 months working with, it I don’t regret it at all. I was able to put 2 extra SSDs and 2 extra big hard disks into it (imagine how fast Time Machine is), added a beefy graphics card and recently installed a Blackmagic DeckLink SDI 4K PCIe card. And all that internally in an unobtrusive tower case that sits under my desk and hides the bulk of cables inside it. PCIe… I can’t really understand, why Apple really has NO hardware in its line up that supports adding PCIe cards. There is so much great hardware available on the market that is inaccessable to Macintosh customers. Boggles my mind.”

In summary: building an Hackintosh is not about being a cheapskate, it’s about getting the hardware that Apple will NEVER sell you at ANY price point.

Interesting that you preferred to quote the second article instead of the more up to date one [snip]

In summary: building an Hackintosh is not about being a cheapskate, it’s about getting the hardware that Apple will NEVER sell you at ANY price point.

The more up to date quote is too personal for me. After a lot of time and effort he got everything to work the way he wanted and was very happy about the result. That part was already suggested to become the result by the more generic statement in the earlier quote. We are all agreeing here: If you have the time, skills and need a HackInTosh might be worth it. But it is not easy, there is no guarantee that it will work and it surely won’t be a money-saver. People on OSnews will love that you can tinker with a pc to get something working that is what you want/need

The more up to date quote is too personal for me. [/q] Personal experience (or lack thereof, since he confessed that it’s been 20 years since he built a computer) is personal, but there’s nothing personal about the list of things he’s been able to add to that build — hardware that he couldn’t have fit in any official Mac.

If you have the time, skills and need a HackInTosh might be worth it.

It’s really not that hard: there are several builds at different price points that are guaranteed to work and the time it takes to assemble them and install the OS isn’t significantly higher than the time it would take if it were a Windows/Linux installation. Spend some time on the forums and you’ll find many more success stories than trouble ones. Problems are fare more likely if you already have some hardware available and you’d rather not start from scratch.

[q]But it is not easy, there is no guarantee that it will work and it surely won’t be a money-saver.

Either I got lucky or it DOES work: the worst that happens to mine is that every week or so it reboots rather than resuming from sleep (but it also happens with Windows 10 and Linux Mint, so it’s an hardware issue and not specific to the Hackintosh). On the other hand, I never experienced a kernel panic or a system freeze.

Also, and I know that I’m repeating myself, it’s not about saving money. Look at the build specs in the signatures of the posters at tonymacx86.com and you’ll see that Apple isn’t selling anything even remotely similar.

there are several builds at different price points that are guaranteed to work [/q]The whole idea of HackInTosh is that you are not limited to hardware that Apple offers, but now I should limit myself to “several builds”. Doesn’t sound like a big improvement. I have done this to a Dell Latitude E65xx laptop that was on such a list and it still didn’t work without extensive Kext-editing. It also broke the next OS-release and had plenty of things that worked badly or not at all (Optimus, Bluetooth).

Spend some time on the forums and you’ll find many more success stories than trouble ones.

[q]Problems are fare more likely if you already have some hardware available and you’d rather not start from scratch.

I completely agree. So if you want to run a HackInTosh successfully, don’t expect it to run on the hardware you own, but buy something from the buyers guide. This indeed will mean your costs will be high and there is no guarantee that it will indeed be successful, stable, problem free or even upgradable in the future (hardware or software). That puts HackInTosh in a very small box of usefulness for people just like the blogger wrote so clearly

The whole idea of HackInTosh is that you are not limited to hardware that Apple offers, but now I should limit myself to “several builds”. [/q] Well, unless we’re talking about a different list on a different web site (https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/august/2018) I’m counting 5 different families, for a total of 48 motherboards and CPUs ranging from the humble Core i3-8100 to the top of the line Core i7-8700K. These boards shere the same chipset (H370 or Z370) and are recommended because they offer “simple post-installation, supported audio codecs, and network controllers”. Also, and oddly enough, NVIDIA makes drivers for MacOS even though the GPUs they support are not found in any official Mac. Maybe things are going to change? 😉

I have done this to a Dell Latitude E65xx laptop that was on such a list and it still didn’t work without extensive Kext-editing.

The philosophy behind the Hackintosh (or FrankenMac, which seems much more appropriate) is to start with right components to make things easier. Doing otherwise might work, but then there’s little point complaining when it doesn’t or takes way too long to get there — just be grateful that this is possible at all, and people are spending their time to make it happen.

[q]So if you want to run a HackInTosh successfully, don’t expect it to run on the hardware you own, but buy something from the buyers guide. This indeed will mean your costs will be high and there is no guarantee that it will indeed be successful, stable, problem free or even upgradable in the future (hardware or software).

Higher cost than recycling parts you have sitting somewhere? Sure, but the components on that list are pretty much guaranteed to give you a working/stable build:

“When running macOS as your main operating system, supported and compatible components are extremely important. That is why we have created a large selection of example systems along with a comprehensive list of the best available hardware. The components listed here might not be the only ones that work, but based on our research they’re the easiest and best supported options.”

Because you can custom configure it to your need, fix it in timely in case something fails, and upgrade components at any time you want, too. Try that we an Apple Mac, they can’t even service or repair their own iMac Pro thing, … not to mention constantly outdated and not user upgradable / serviceable rest of the line, ..!

Servicibility/Repairability is indeed a big pro, but when I read about the negatives like

at first I wasn’t able to mount external hard drives. There was a solution for that however and it took me a while to make it work, but external disks do mount now. However I can’t keep them connected to the PC at all time, because at some point the machine just freezes, which is not the case when the external drives are not connected. [/q] [q]running external hard drives on the same USB bus can cut bandwidth from the bluetooth adapter and the mouse gets a noticable lag. This can go so far as a total shutdown of the bluetooth adapter.

Not being able to keep external drives connected, laggy mouse, freezing hardware during daily use are all no-go’s on a professional machine. So I am very happy that I don’t need macOS